Alphabet
by nonsequiturvy
Summary: Robin and Regina thrown into twenty-six different circumstances of love, hate, and everything in between, with varying levels of fluff and angst. Outlaw Queen moments in a series of one-word prompts, from A to Z.
1. ABCD

_Accident_

* * *

"Please," she sobs, her hands tightening around the metal rods of her cage, and they tremble under the force of her grief. "Please, your majesty, I have a family at home—a husband, and a son—"

"Your peasant matters do not concern me," hisses the Evil Queen, and her heavily perfumed face comes within inches of Marian's. "You should have thought of these people you claim are so important to you _before _you decided to commit treason by helping a wanted fugitive."

Marian shudders under the Queen's triumphant gaze, utterly devoid of compassion, and she knows her case is hopeless, but the thought of her Robin and their boy, left in this world without her, renews her courage.

The Queen turns to make her exit.

"Don't you dare walk away from me!" Marian shouts, and one of the black knights, who had been a motionless sentry by her cell all day, actually turns his head, and his armor creaks from disuse.

The Queen halts in her tracks. "Excuse me?" she says slowly, each word dripping from her mouth like venom. "Would you care to repeat that? Because it will be the last thing you ever do."

"Please," Marian says again, and the tears are hot as they run down her cheeks, "I'm a mother. I've only been a mother for two weeks, but I'm a mother, and that's all that I am now. It's all that matters. Please don't take that away from my son!"

She likes to think she hasn't imagined it when the Queen's stance falters, just the tiniest bit, and her cold, beautiful face turns ever so slightly back over her shoulder, though she does not grace Marian with another of her terrifying stares.

"Tell me. Do you love your son?"

"More than anything," Marian gasps, daring to hope, and could this woman possibly recognize, understand even, the profound connection between mother and child—this evil woman, who had inspired fear in legions of children as they huddled around campfires, regaling each other with countless tales of her cruelty?

"And do you think," the Queen continues, "your son will be able to forgive you if you never come home?"

"How would he know—" Marian starts, but it's a terribly wrong thing to say.

"Then I'll see you in the morning," the Queen says with finality, and she is already disappearing around the corner, "for your _execution_."

.

.

.

Her cell is damp with cold, and the black knight standing guard had taken the only torch with him when he followed the Queen up the stairs. Marian curls up in a corner, hugging herself to keep warm, and she tries not to cry but the circumstances are so unfair, and now she won't be the only one who is punished for something she hadn't even been caught doing.

She had only wound up in the Evil Queen's clutches by accident, by some dark ugly twist of fate.

"Wrong, wrong, wrong!" the Queen had shouted in outrage when her black knights brought Marian to her, per their instructions to apprehend any woman with dark curls and a hooded cloak. "Did you forget the part about the lips as red as blood and the skin as white as snow? Idiots." She had stood before Marian, hands on her hips, looking her over, until she decided she might prove to be of some use after all.

"Tell me," she had demanded, "have you recently come to the aid of a wanted woman who goes by the name of Snow White?"

"Snow White?" Marian had stammered. Yes, in fact, she had. With her help, Snow White had shot her first arrow not two days prior. And with her help, Snow White had since been smuggled out of Nottingham, armed with a bow and quiver that Marian had stolen from her husband's own private collection. (When she'd confessed to him later, he'd only smiled, kissed her forehead.)

But she hadn't needed to say any of it out loud, because it was written all over her face.

"Throw her in my carriage," the Queen had declared with a theatrical gesture. "I'll make an example out of her in the next village we visit."

Marian closes her eyes at the memory of the burlap sack being tossed over her head, of the bumpy ride that took her farther and farther away from her family, of all the frightened townsfolk upon learning what her fate was to be at the hands of the Queen.

Suddenly there's a scuffling sound, and then the unpleasant screech of metal against metal, and with a rusty creak the door to her cell is cast wide open. A gloved arm thrusts in.

"Make haste," says a voice she does not recognize, and it echoes inside the helmet concealing the face of her rescuer. She inches hesitantly forward and realizes it's the knight, her black knight, and he's holding a ring of keys and beckoning urgently for her to quicken her step. "You need to go, now, before it's too late!"

"I don't understand," she says. "You're releasing me? On whose orders?"

"Nobody who wishes for you to know," the knight answers cryptically, grabbing her arm as she reaches the door and practically hauling her out of the cage. "Go! And don't get caught, or it'll be my head on a platter for the Queen."

.

.

.

She's stealing through the castle, unsure of which way to turn next, when she suddenly comes across an open archway, and a marble staircase spiraling down to the courtyard below. She tiptoes to the bottom and finds herself under an immense sprawling apple tree, fragrant with blossoms and yet, somehow, vaguely sinister.

And when she rounds its vast girth of a trunk, she knows why.

Sitting on a bench, at the foot of the tree, is the Evil Queen.

But she does not look the least bit surprised to see her. In fact, she does not even look at her, at all.

"You," she says with open disdain. "Can't even manage to escape properly, can you?"

"Your majesty," Marian begins, but the Queen holds up a hand to silence her, and suddenly she understands. The woman wears her makeup like a mask, but her hand reveals everything in the almost imperceptible way it trembles now.

She is letting her go.

"Leave," she hisses, "leave now, before I change my mind. Be the mother that your boy deserves."

"Thank you," Marian says, overcome, and she is not sure whether to curtsy or not, "thank you, your majesty. I will never forget this."

"You'd do well to do just that," the Evil Queen snarls, but in that moment, to Marian, she doesn't look so evil. She just looks…alone.

She knows her observations would not be welcomed, so she says nothing, and before she can second-guess her luck she hurries away into the night, towards home, to her husband, and to Roland.

.

.

.

But luck, as it turns out, is still not on her side, and she will never get to be the mother that Roland deserves.

"You again!" says the man standing before her, and he can't believe _his_ luck. She's surrounded by him and his lackeys, all as foul on the surface as they are on the inside, and they're the very same scoundrels she, Robin and his Merry Men had been stealing from when she'd gotten separated from them, separated and taken as an unknown hostage by the Queen's army of black knights.

And this man is the very same she had run from on their wedding day, had run with all her might into the arms of Robin Hood, and had never looked back, until this moment.

The Sheriff of Nottingham is advancing towards her, licking dry lips and fingering the knife tied round his belt with a strip of leather. She turns quickly but there's nowhere to run to now, only the heaving chests of men drunk on liquor and on lust, and as she whirls back around to face the Sheriff—she is _not_ going down without a fight—she sees the murderous intent in his eyes, glinting like ugly black beetles, and she lets out a scream, though no one who cares will be able to hear it.

* * *

_Bruise_

* * *

"Ow! Mom—"

"Hold still," she instructs sternly.

Henry squirms under her grip on his shoulder and the glare in her eyes, but pauses when she leans closer to inspect the cuts and scrapes on his arm.

"What exactly happened to you," she asks, pulling out her antiseptic and wiping away the blood with the practiced efficiency of a mother to two rowdy boys.

His eyes dart away from hers suddenly, suspiciously, as though worried she would be able to see the truth in them just by looking (she probably could).

"Nothing," he says, entirely unconvincing. "I just, fell. It's slippery outside. You know, all the rain."

She raises an eyebrow, but doesn't pry any more because she'll get her answers one way or another. This one particular gash looks like it could benefit from stitches, but she doesn't relish the idea of waiting on Dr. Whale in the emergency department for five hours to do what she could in about five seconds. Waving a hand, the blood unclots, threads back into the capillaries, and the skin reseals itself from end to end. Good as new.

"Mom!" and he's the one scolding her now, "that's cheating."

Regina smiles innocently at him. "Does this mean you're ready to tell me the truth about how you got like this?" and that shuts him up.

She gives his shoulder a gentle squeeze when she's finished patching him up, and he winces before he can help himself, then looks dejected when he realizes that she's noticed.

Standing, hands on her hips, she looks down at him and he quails. "Up," she orders. "Shirt off."

Henry's reluctantly obedient, and there's a large bruise swelling on the anterior surface of his right shoulder, right where it meets with his clavicle. Tiny capillaries have ruptured upon impact from some unknown force, bleeding out into the tissue surrounding them.

"What," she says, voice low and dangerous, "is this?"

He opens his mouth and she warns him, "_Don't_ tell me about how much it's been raining again."

He mumbles something about bonding time and the forest and recoil—_excuse me?_—but then her phone is going off, no doubt the Charmings to remind her of the meeting she is now late for, because she needs _them_ to mother her of all people, and Henry is saved by her ringtone.

"Crap, the time," but he doesn't even own a watch, "I gotta go, Mom!" he says loudly and he's already halfway out the door. Her eyes narrow at his retreating form as Snow's little voice starts talking into her ear. "Gonna be late for—something. Love you, bye!"

.

.

.

"How's Henry," Robin asks her innocently that night as they prepare for bed.

She's removing her earrings by the vanity, but she pauses at his question.

"I don't recall saying anything about Henry," she says finally in an attempt at casual.

He comes up behind her, wraps an arm around her waist, his other hand pressed low into her hip, causing warmth to pool into the bottom of her stomach.

"No," he agrees, and presses an open-mouthed kiss to the back of her neck. "Curious minds just wished to inquire." His words rumble against her skin and she shivers.

"You're trying to distract me," she realizes, and turning around to face him with the accusation is a mistake because he has her trapped between the edge of the vanity and the angle of his hips, and he only grants a second for her breath to catch before he's stealing it away with a kiss.

Her hands come up to caress his neck, humming into his mouth as he opens it further, inviting her in, his fingers trailing up her back to tangle with her hair. His kisses spread languidly along her jawline and behind her ear, a particularly sensitive spot for her, and she reaches out to grasp his shoulder as her head rolls back in ecstasy.

Robin's entire body freezes and he lets out a grunt of pain.

Her head snaps back up and she knows the look of guilt before she sees it on his face, expects to find a matching bruise on his body as soon as she's ripped his white undershirt off of it, and she does.

He looks childlike in his sheepishness, attempts a lopsided smile to win her over, but she will have none of it.

"What have you and Henry been up to," she says, incensed, even as her fingers caress the bruise with a gentle touch of concern.

"David—" he begins.

"_Charming_!" she says, head tilting back in shock.

"And Hook—"

Eyes are rolling now. "A merry band of misfits," she drawls.

"Well, we thought it would do the lad some good to learn various schools of thought on how to properly defend oneself," he explains. She can't help but smile at the image of the three of them, crowded around Henry, arguing over the finer points of swords, hooks, bows and arrows. Robin rotates his shoulder to stretch out the tender ligaments, and winces slightly.

"So who brought the shotgun," she asks tartly, and then sighs at his look of surprise. "Recoil," she supplies, bends over to apply a soothing kiss like a balm to his bruised arm.

Robin smirks. "Did I mention Granny came with us?"

A laugh escapes her as he pulls her to his side with his good arm, they tumble onto the bed together, and she loves him all the more for wanting to protect her son, for wanting him to learn how to protect himself.

It is a lesson she wishes he had imparted to her as well, not two days later, when his wife returns to him alive, well and with many stories to tell of the time she spent in the Evil Queen's dungeons.

But no amount of light magic can heal the mark he has left on her, and he is like a bruise on her heart.

* * *

_Constant_

* * *

The first time they meet, his hand is caught in the pantry door and his tongue is caught in his throat.

"What are you doing?" she asks curiously, and he stares at her, jaw agape, as though he's never seen such an exotic thing up close before.

"I—I—milady," the boy stammers. "I'm sorry, I was only just—" He swallows. "Please don't tell your father. My mum is very ill, and we've hardly had anything to eat in days."

"You must be starving!" she says, aghast, and he looks bashful. "Please, have as much as you like. There's far too much for our family alone, and half of it goes to waste as it is."

He's either too shocked or embarrassed to make a move, so she makes it for him, piling loaves upon loaves of bread as well as some dried fruits into a spare sheet of dining linen, and the knot she ties at the top can barely contain it all.

"Here," she whispers. "Go on, take it!"

But the act of freely offering to him what he'd originally planned to steal makes him hang his head in shame, and he wishes he could be someone who only gives her things instead of taking them away from her.

"Where is your family?" she asks, and he points out the window, in the direction of the stables. "Take me to them, please." When he doesn't budge, she sighs, touches her palm to his—she must think him deaf, dumb or both, he realizes regretfully—and their fingers intertwine, hands swinging up and down with each step they take together.

.

.

.

The first time they kiss in public, it is still in secret, behind a marble column draped in velvet, at one of the annual balls her mother throws to entice potential young suitors into wedding her eldest daughter.

"Robin," she giggles as his lips travel along the smooth, silky plane of her throat, "stop, my mother could walk in at any moment."

"Let her," he says gruffly, and the years have filled out the hard lean muscles in the arms that tighten around her waist now, and in the chest that she shoves at halfheartedly to push him away.

"You know that can't happen," she scolds him, "_ever_," and the number of times she's had to tell him this is the number of times he's grown tired of hearing it.

"Regina," he says, taking her lovely stubborn face into his hands, "I love you. And I am not ashamed by that love. Why are you?"

"You know it's not like that," she whispers, deposits a kiss to his collarbone, breathes in his scent, and he will always smell like the forest to her.

"Tell me again what it's like, then," he says.

"It's like this—I am trying to protect you from her," she tells him, "because she would have you killed if she ever found out about us." He looks skeptical, and she alone has tested the limits of her mother's cruelty and knows that there are none.

"Don't leave me," she says, and her voice sounds broken, as though he already has, and he kisses her hair with a tenderness that casts an ache like a curse over her heart.

"I wouldn't dream of it."

.

.

.

The first time they fight, she is crying into her sister's arms for many hours after. Their mother has finally secured the happy future of not one, but two, of her beloved daughters, and the news has spread throughout the castle grounds that the ladies of the house are soon to be ladies no longer, but duchess and comtessa.

"Oh, Regina," her sister tsks now, combing her hair in soothing repetitive motions as her sobs wrack the bedframe. "What's so bad about the Duke? He doesn't smell nearly as bad as that Earl whom Mother practically tried to sell you to last year."

She can't even bring herself to muster up the laugh that her sister is expecting. All she can think about is the look on Robin's face when she had found him at the stables earlier that night, he'd already heard the news, and not from her.

"Regina," says Zelena suddenly, grabbing hold of her shoulders and lifting her up to sit like a ragdoll. "Does this have something to do with that stable boy?"

She hiccups, "What stable boy," but Zelena's not fooled.

"Oh don't play dumb," she says with a roll of her eyes. "I've seen the way he looks at you during your riding lessons. And I've seen the way you look at him, when you think you're the only two in the world standing there."

"I love him," Regina says fiercely, and Zelena doesn't look terribly surprised, though she's not exactly thrilled either.

"Mother won't stand for it," she tells Regina. "She'll have him killed. Or worse, she'll tell the Duke, and then he will. You know that." Sighing, she takes her sister's hands, soothes out the tension that's curling them into fists. "Are you that selfish, that you're willing to sentence him to death for the simple act of loving you?"

.

.

.

And the last time they see each other, she tells him she _will_ be married in a fortnight, that she is a lucky woman, and the Duke a lucky man.

But like Zelena, Robin is no fool, and she'll have to do better than a few hollow-sounding words to have him properly convinced.

"This is all I ever wanted," she says now, and his eyebrows rise as though to say, _Nice try. Not good enough._

"No," he growls, "this is all your mother ever wanted for you. Why can't you bloody stand up to her, for once in your life!" She rears back as though the words themselves have slapped her, and he instantly regrets them, starts forward to take her arm, and she shoves him away.

"Don't touch me," she hisses. "Don't touch me with your—with your _filthy_ hands."

He holds these hands up now in a signal of peace, or at the very least a ceasefire, but she barrels on. "How deluded must you be to think that I would sacrifice this, my one chance at true happiness, to bathe in streams and roll around in haystacks for all eternity with _you_?"

He looks truly startled now, and she takes that to mean it's finally working.

"You were just a plaything," she says, and she thanks whatever higher power is out there that her voice isn't cracking the way her heart is. "A distraction until I met the real thing, and now I have—I've found a _real_ man to warm my bed at night."

"So this is what you think of me. This is what it's really like."

She can't let herself cry. She can't. She knows that if she does, he will never leave her side again. Which is exactly the promise he'd made to her, and now she's forcing him to break it.

"I'll tell you exactly what it's like," she snarls, and she's disgusted with herself. "It's like this—I will _never_ be with you. You're nothing." He advances a step and her palm shoots out, catching him across the face. His eyes are burning as much as the angry welt on his cheek is now. "You're nothing to me!" she shouts. "Nothing but a common _thief_!"

Which is true—because while he may not have stolen her bread, he has stolen her heart.

He walks away with it now, and she realizes that she loves him more in this moment than she ever has, and that for as long as she has loved him, for her entire life, really, she has never spoken the words to him out loud, and now he will never know.

.

.

.

The first time they meet, he rescues her from a flying monkey with an arrow to the head. Maybe this means he's not the enemy, but it doesn't exactly make him her friend either. He catches onto her coldness quickly, but treats her with the same warmth she seems to reserve only for his son, especially after she returns the favor by transforming a flying monkey into a stuffed one.

The first time they almost kiss, the only thing stopping them is not the physical distance that separates their bodies, but the kind that separates her head from her own traitorous heart. She is wandering the forest alone, longing for her castle, for her stables and for her saddle, to ride once more and feel the wind nipping at her cheeks and tugging through her hair. Her daydreams take her straight to the river, and she's aghast to feel her face burning up at the sight of him, bare, back facing her, the water treacherously low at his waist. Then she's absolutely mortified when he turns to catch her in her stare, and the smirk that forms at the corner of his mouth sends her pulse into a wicked frenzy. Robin's advancing towards her now, revealing a new tantalizing part of himself with each step into shallower waters, and then she sees his tattoo, she finally sees what's right in front of her, and her first instinct is to run away from it.

The first time they fight, it is in a public place, it is as volatile as the campfire spitting beneath their feet, and it certainly won't be their last time, either. He's infuriated with her for recklessly abandoning their hunting party to go on a solo monkey-chasing mission, and for the life of her she can't understand why. Snow White is loitering on a log nearby, doing her best to pretend she can't hear a word, and Regina lets her think she's succeeded. But Snow is the closest thing to a sister she's ever had, and she wonders if it wouldn't be so bad to talk over all these dangerous feelings her heart has dared to feel whenever he is around. That is, until she sees him pick up his boy, they turn in for the night, and she remembers that Henry is the only real thing in her life, and she has lost him, and nothing else matters.

The last time they see each other, she doesn't say anything to him at all. They part ways outside Rumplestiltskin's castle; the Charmings are already several paces ahead, on their quest to find Glinda, and Robin has volunteered to stay behind with Belle while she makes one last attempt to break through to Rumple. He's watching Regina now, and there's so much depth to his gaze that she forces herself to look away before she drowns in it. And as Snow enacts the second curse and Regina splits one heart to beat as two, she thinks, how weak must her own heart be, to find solace in the fact that this curse will erase all the regret of having never opened itself up to him?

.

.

.

The first time they meet, he shoots an arrow at _her_ head, and he's completely unfazed when she grabs it out of thin air. There's a strange familiarity about him, a pleasurable ease with which he speaks to her, and an unexpected thrill whenever their eyes meet, that she warms up to immediately. The shock of seeing the lion tattoo is only a small detour, in the grand scheme of things.

The first time they kiss, she doesn't have her heart, and he's the one who lost it, but she kisses him anyway, and he's never been gladder of anything, as he tells her breathlessly when they finally pull away, but only for a second, before their lips find each other again.

The first time they fight, he tells her he wishes to never see her again. She would expect nothing less from the man whose wife she had killed in another lifetime, and some shadow of her former villainous self wants to hiss the world "likewise" at him like a curse. But she is no longer the Evil Queen, and he knows this, tells her as much when he's back not a day later, he is the only constant in her life, and he can never stay away for long. But because she is no longer the Evil Queen, and because the very possibility of that transformation has made his love for her as powerful as it is, she has to let that love go, give him the second chance he deserves, with his wife, and not with her. He understands and he tries, for her, for Marian, and for Roland, for everyone but himself, until Marian lets him go, because she is selfless, and he has to learn how to be a little less so. But Regina's not sure she's strong enough to let him in again, and so he waits, patiently, until she is.

The first time she tells him she loves him, it's directed to his back as he's walking out of the diner, she practically shouts it at him, and it certainly won't be the last time, but for now there are no more words. He turns abruptly, sweeps her up in his arms like they're in a damn fairytale, and his lips are hot against hers, desperate, bruising, impatient, because there are so many lost moments to make up for, and Snow is not even trying to hide the fact that she can't stop smiling anymore.

And the timing is finally, finally right.

* * *

_Daughter_

* * *

He does not mean to raise his voice at her. But Sherwood Forest is not as harmless as it appears in the storybooks, especially not as twilight nears, and it's best for young girls not to leave a father's sight for too long, even if it is to catch lightning bugs, as she had insisted to him through watery eyes.

Her little face screws up in its determination not to let the tears fall, and she runs away from his outstretched arms, his apology, across the campfire and into the arms of Snow White, the closest thing to a motherly figure she has ever known.

"You shouldn't be so hard on her, Robin," a voice murmurs at his shoulders, which slump in defeat.

Tinker Bell perches on the log beside him.

"I know you want to protect her," she says.

He sighs, and his face is in his hands. "And I know there are some things I can't protect her from," he admits, and why had he been cursed to raise two children who had both known the loss of a mother?

Tinker Bell squeezes his bare forearm in sympathy, then they're both looking down at his tattoo and it means more to each than the other will ever know. "We all miss her."

"Not like I do," he whispers, and she can't argue with that.

None of the families traveling in their party had brought up a girl of their own before—all they'd known were boys, and Emma of course, who had raised herself all on her own.

But he knows that if she were here now, she would know exactly what to do, would take their daughter into her arms, would say the words to best soothe the wounds her father's angry remarks had left behind, and then her warm embrace would heal the rest. She would put her to bed after her tears dried, and their daughter would finally sleep soundly, rather than tossing and turning as she had done for weeks.

He allows himself to imagine she would even lean in as though to tell a secret, yet whisper just loudly enough for him to hear, "your father drives me crazy too sometimes," and he almost smiles but then the daydream is gone with the rest of the sunlight.

He throws a twig into the fire and watches it catch flame, though it does not burn.

His daughter is peering over Snow's shoulder at a rustling sound coming from the bushes. Suddenly Neal comes tumbling out of them, startling a small scream out of her as she dives headfirst in Snow's arms.

The boy laughs delightedly and proceeds to sneak up behind his mother, quiet as a field mouse. Robin feels the smile tugging again at the corners of his mouth, as his daughter, thinking she is safe at last, peeks her head up once more.

Neal is ready for her, hands brandished out like claws, and she lets out a terrified shriek to match his gleeful one, dashing out of Snow's lap as quickly as her stumbling legs can carry her.

"Neal," Snow is turning around and scolding him, "What have I told you about scaring her like that?"

Robin is shaking with uncontrollable laughter now, deep and wonderful, and his daughter shoots him a startled look, unaccustomed to the sound; when she realizes it's directed at her, she is as affronted as is possible for a four year old to be, and stalks off dramatically.

"Rayna," he calls to her now, and though she doesn't turn toward his voice, he knows she's listening from the way her footsteps halt and her shoulders square up. "Not so close to the edge of the woods. Roland, take your sister's hand. We know better than to let her wander off like that."

Roland obliges, his boy has gotten so big so fast, and before long he will be breaking hearts of his own with those dimples, as his Gina was always fond of telling him.

He leads Rayna back to the campfire, her heels dragging obstinately in the dirt. She is already so beautiful at such a young age, the spitting image of her mother. Robin's heart pauses a beat every time he recognizes that same look in her eye, mocking but fondly so, and the quirk in her lip whenever her father thinks he's being funnier than he really is.

But he is smiling now, and her anger is forgotten as swiftly as it had come, a mercurial thing that only a child could pull off with such grace. She runs into his arms at last, deposits herself in his lap.

"Tell me about Mama," she implores immediately, and she has asked him this every day since the day she could, and he has always found it so difficult to say no to those big, dark eyes that she hadn't inherited from him. Always finds it so difficult to say much before the pain of losing her feels too fresh for him to go on, like picking a scab that will never heal.

He hesitates.

"Please, Papa." Her lower lip pouts up at him. "Neal doesn't need to hear stories about his mama. She can tell him herself." Rayna tugs on the sleeve of his tunic. "But what about mine?"

"Why don't I do you one better, darling," he finally responds, hoisting her up onto his hip, "and I'll show you, instead."

.

.

.

He knows Roland comes here often, has caught him sneaking away from camp from time to time with handpicked wildflowers fisted in his hand, daisies and snowbells and daffodils, and he always sees them again later, neatly arranged on the unmarked ground where he and Snow had buried her four years earlier.

But he has never brought Rayna here, never could bring himself to, until tonight, and he feels ready.

"This is where your mother and I first met," he says. "And near that tree over there"—Rayna follows his finger with her gaze—"that's where I saved her from a flying monkey."

Her eyes are wide and full of wonder. "Was it love at first sight?"

"Not in the slightest," he chuckles. "She threatened my life several times, actually." He pauses, thinks that maybe that's not the sort of story he should be telling to their daughter, but Rayna is giggling.

"Mama was funny," she says, and Robin smiles in agreement.

"That she was," he says softly.

"But she didn't, though," Rayna points out.

"Quite the contrary," Robin says with a laugh, "she saved me, in more ways than one." There's a lump in his throat. "She saved us all." And that's why she is no longer with them, because she saved them all, but she couldn't save everyone.

"She was pretty too, I bet," Rayna says thoughtfully, twirling a lock of brown hair in her little finger, and he recalls how Regina would pretend to hate his little habit of doing the same to hers, swatting his hand off, but he always caught the smile on her lips before she turned away.

"Your mother," he sits down, hoisting Rayna into his lap, "was the most stunning creature I had ever met." And he wishes he could extract the images of Regina from his mind and share them with their daughter like a daguerreotype, so that she can cherish them in place of the memories she would never have.

They examine the fresh bunch of flowers Roland had left there recently, roots still intact. "Shall we plant these, my love?"

"Yes," she nods enthusiastically, and together, they dig and scoop and pat the dirt down until their nails are thick with it and the scent of flowers will be near impossible to wash out of their skin later. Satisfied with their work, she puts her small hand in his much larger one and the moonlight guides them back to camp, as the daffodils dance in the wind behind them.

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.

.

Rayna sleeps peacefully that night, her stuffed monkey held tightly in her arms. It's ratty and ruined from being well-loved, with bare bits of thread poking out of his ears, and Snow has had to sew his eyes back on more times than Robin can count because they keep popping off.

Roland had been reluctant to part with it, even when he should've been too old for such artifacts of childhood, but he hadn't been given much of a choice; Rayna had been eyeing it for some time, and when her fingers were developed enough to grasp and hold on to things, she'd done so to the monkey, and then never let go.

* * *

**A/N:** 'Alternatives' is my baby, but it's kind of like my baby that keeps getting me sick because babies are germ buckets basically. So I thought I'd take a little break with these guys for a while. I hope you enjoyed it! And if you have any prompts in mind for the remaining letters I will happily take them!


	2. E

**A/N: **This one is a sequel of sorts to Constant.

* * *

_Envelopes_

* * *

He writes to her, every day, for a year. At first he dares to allow himself the hope that she will respond. Weeks pass but he feels reassured by the fact that she is a stubborn, strong-willed woman and it is half the reason he fell in love with her to begin with, and the other half is because he simply cannot imagine living without her. And he's always known she feels the same.

Then it's been several months and he thinks but of course, her mother must be intercepting his correspondence somehow, or a servant of the Duke's household is tossing his letters into the fireplace on her behalf, it's the only probable explanation.

But it's not the only possible one.

Finally, after the leaves have turned color, fallen, frozen, thawed, sprouted and begun to fall again, he begins to doubt. The longest he'd been able to survive without speaking to her, up until this point, was exactly two weeks and a day, after they had kissed for the very first time.

.

.

.

She is laughing from some great height above him as he leans against the trunk of the apple tree, whittling arrows out of fallen branches with the pocketknife she'd just given him for his birthday. He smiles at the sound, doesn't get to hear it often, can barely even coax a smile out of her whenever they are within a kilometer of the castle walls.

But here in her garden, tucked away into the farther edge of the grounds, with wild fields to ride in and the stables not far from view, she laughs freely, at everything, but more than anything, he has noticed, the thing she loves to laugh at most is him.

"Robin, come up here," she calls to him, and he pauses in his carving to look up. She's poised on a wide-set branch some yards above, her skirts bunched up around the waist in a highly improper manner, and as she leans over to meet his eye his gaze is caught instead by the way the sunlight glitters off her long dark hair, the way her chest flutters up and down with every breath she takes.

"I'm rather enjoying the view from down here, thank you," he says, and she glares at him.

"Fine," she says loftily, "have it your way," and she starts to jump up and down, sending a course of vibrations through every branch from trunk to tip. Apples begin to fall, most of them landing a distance away from him and bouncing off into the deeper pockets of grass, but then one knocks him in the arm, another narrowly misses his face as he looks back up in alarm.

"Regina," he starts, "don't be ridiculous, you're going to—"

"Going to what?" her voice carries down to him, and it is rapturous. "Fall? But you'd only catch me."

"I'd rather we not put that to the test," and the instant he says the words he regrets them, because they weren't meant as a challenge but he knows that's all she'll hear.

And he knows her so well, "We'll see about that!" she declares, and his heart nearly comes out of his throat when he sees her close her eyes, spread her arms like a pair of wings, and fall, casually back, into the air.

"Goddamn it, Regina!" he curses at her as she tumbles down, but she knows him so well and his arms are already out to catch her, she lands cradled in his embrace with a soft oomph, and her hands are around his neck and her face is so close to his all of sudden that he forgets to breathe.

He looks at her, she looks at him. The hand he has anchored under her knees gently lowers her feet to the ground, and when he rights himself her forearms are resting on his chest and she's peering up at him through thick eyelashes.

"Aren't you going to kiss me?" she asks breathlessly.

His hands have somehow found their way to her hips, they flex involuntarily as his eyes are drawn down to her full, pink lips, and he freezes at the sight.

She is pouting. "Must I do everything myself?" A long-suffering sigh and he's still staring at her, like an idiot, he thinks, and it's altogether exhilarating and entirely unfair how this one person can have such an effect on him.

Her face nears and he holds his still, very still, and then her mouth presses slowly, almost shyly, to his, and he knows in that moment that he loves her, that he's loved her since the day she caught him with his hand in the pantry. And the fact that she quite possibly loves him too is something he can't afford, among other things, including the kind of future she deserves, and it certainly isn't a future with him.

Not kissing her back is the hardest thing he's ever done.

She senses something is wrong and pulls away, and he can't take the hurt, the burn of his rejection clouding her face, but he won't have to take it for long because she's propelling herself off him with a hand to his chest, and if she hadn't backed him up against the tree with her kiss then he would've fallen over. He opens his mouth to say something, anything, just say something you idiot, but it's too late and she's running to Shadowfax, the mare they helped birth together in the stables one stormy night, and his heart feels like a maelstrom now but he knows he's made the right decision.

But two weeks pass and then he's thinking, not so much. She doesn't speak to him, doesn't look at him anymore, even when he's preparing her saddle for her day's ride, and where she would've waited for him to mount his own stallion and join her, she tugs immediately at her reins. Shadowfax always seems to drag her hooves in the mulch, but never in open defiance, and he swears the mare always gives him a reproachful look before they take off, and in the hours they are gone he tries to summon up the courage to break the silence at last, but it's resilient and strong, the same way Regina's heart is.

And he can't imagine a future without it.

He holds his hand up to Regina now as Shadowfax trots back into the stables, which she promptly ignores, choosing to dismount on the opposite side. While her back is turned the mare glares openly at him, then practically shoves him forward with a nose to his back.

He grabs Regina's wrist and she turns, instinctively draws her hand in toward her chest, but the movement pulls him with her, and the hard lines of his body come flush against the softness of hers. She's too stunned to remember that she's vowed never to look at him again, and he takes advantage of it, hips pressing her into the door of Shadowfax's stall. He lowers his face to hers and their noses touch, his eyes flutter close at the contact, and he just breathes for a moment, breathes her in, and then his lips are on hers.

They kiss hesitantly at first, soft slow pecks as they learn the contours of each other's mouths, until his hand finds its way to her hip, gripping just hard enough to sneak a gasp out of her, and the instant their tongues meet he is lost. His other hand, still on her wrist, slams it against the wooden stall door, while her free one rises to the back of his head, her fingers drag through his hair, and his hips jerk involuntarily in response.

"Regina," her name passes through his lips like a prayer, and she captures it with another kiss, deep and probing, so exquisite it is almost painful, and he can't help but wonder if she is punishing him for having let the last two weeks go to waste. Because if this is her idea of disciplining him, then he'll gladly find some way to antagonize her, every day, for as long as he lives.

Shadowfax whinnies out a warning and Regina's mother is rounding the corner to the entrance just in time to see Robin leading the mare back into her stall, and Regina is halfway across the barn hanging up her saddle and harness.

"Hello, Mother," she greets her, and Robin nods politely in her direction, which Cora ignores as she always does, and he has never been more glad of it.

"Regina," she says reproachfully, looking her over with a critical eye, "you're filthy. The Earl arrives tonight, and you're two baths shy of appearing halfway presentable. Come."

"Yes, Mother," says Regina indifferently, and she doesn't look back as she follows Cora out of the stables, her save haven, and back to the castle that is her prison. But something flutters out of her hand as she steps out of sight, ivory cream with scarlet-trimmed edges, and he walks over to pick it up once he's sure they're gone from sight. He fingers her handkerchief, a delicate apple blossom stitched into one corner, and her fragrance lingers on the fabric, on his heart.

Sometimes when her mother is observing nearby she will make a point to snap at him for some clumsy, oafish thing he's done, letting Shadowfax throw another shoe, how could you be so stupid, but it doesn't matter, because she'll make it up to him later, sometimes much later if she can't get away soon enough, with a kiss to his throat that has him shuddering, or a trail of kisses that burns his skin from collarbone to navel, and her hand dragging across his chest down to his abdomen, which clenches with his desire to take her, right there under their moonlit tree.

And he knows that it's love.

Or at least, he thought he did.

.

.

.

He pulls her handkerchief out of his left breast pocket now, and the scent of her has long faded, the edges are frayed, but the apple blossom is red and vibrant as ever. His hand clenches and the fabric folds up in his fist. Had he been so blinded by his own love for her that he had failed to see the shallow depths of hers?

No, it's not possible, he tells himself, but still his letters go unanswered, and it's as though his heart has bled like ink into every sheet of the parchment paper that he folds into thirds, drips it closed with molten wax that bears no seal. He feels the pain of her absence acutely, sends each letter off with another little part of his soul trapped inside, and it's finally dawning on him that if she hasn't written back by now, it's because she never intends to.

He pictures her wandering her new castle, hand dragging across stone walls as she explores every corner of it, alone, shy at first when every servant bows to greet her, the lady of the house, and she is infinitely more unsure of this man who is a stranger but also her husband. But she slowly warms to him, one night even joins him for supper dressed in one of many fancy gowns he has custom-ordered in an attempt to win her over one small luxury at a time, and the next night he takes her riding, and every sunset thereafter, until they bring her genuine joy, while for Robin they each mark off yet another day in which he has not heard from her.

His fist is shaking so hard now the flame of his candle nearly flickers into nonexistence, and he puts a palm down to still the table.

There is a knock at the door. A shaggy head pokes inside.

"The daily post is here, Robin," Little John tells him, but the look on his face is the same as it's been every day for the past few months they've boarded together in this tiny inn above the tavern. "Still no word from this fair maiden of yours."

"She's not mine," says Robin, "not anymore." Perhaps she never was.

"I'm sure there's a reasonable explanation for it," Little John offers, but Robin is shaking his head.

"It's too late, my friend. I never should have let her go." I never should have believed she was _mine_ to let go; I never should have kissed her back.

"Maybe she has the same doubts about you," insists Little John, "and all she needs is a good reminder of the truth."

"Yes, the truth," Robin bursts out. "The truth that she doesn't—that she never—"

But Little John remains calm. "At the very least you owe her the benefit of the doubt before you jump to any conclusions. And you owe it to yourself, too."

And he's right, Robin thinks. Maybe it's time to pay a visit to her, the Duchess of Nottingham, and learn the truth once and for all, even if what he discovers may very well destroy him.

"I'll have the innkeeper prepare you several days' worth of rations," says Little John, interpreting correctly the weary determination lining Robin's face. "You've a long journey ahead of you. They say Sherwood Forest is overrun with bandits who don't take kindly to trespassers."

.

.

.

Robin heeds Little John's warning of the hooded outlaws riding amok in the woods, but it proves unnecessary; he could easily pass as one of them.

It's not until he arrives at the castle that he feels vulnerable, exposed. Maybe his body is equipped to fight or flee at a moment's notice, but it's not his body's wellbeing that he fears for now.

"I wouldn't come any closer if I were you," a voice says behind him, but he's already turned and drawn an arrow from his quiver, angling it straight at the heart of a woman in black. A shock of curly red hair tumbles down past her shoulders.

"Oh!" says Zelena, and she is just as surprised to see him as he is her.

Remembering his manners, he lowers his bow and arrow, dips his head, but with a touch of impatience that she chooses not to notice.

"You really shouldn't be here," she tells him, almost offhandedly, now.

"I don't give a bloody damn about where I should or shouldn't be," he says heatedly, and she raises an eyebrow, "not this time."

Zelena looks almost impressed. "Touching, really," she says, "but it won't do you any good now. I'm afraid you're too late."

He already knows this, but he has to try, if only because failure is a slightly less unbearable alternative to a lifetime of regret.

"Where is she," he demands, silently cursing the tremor in his voice.

"Not far from here," she replies cryptically, "but certainly far from your reach."

"_Where_," he growls, and he doesn't want to play any of her games.

"You'll find her in the gardens, I suspect. But you'd best not go after her," she says to him, not terribly convincingly, because they both know he's going to anyway. "You might not like what you find."

.

.

.

The first time he sees her again, she is kneeling down at the base of her apple tree, turning the fallen blossoms over in her palms, fingering their delicate browning petals. His gaze draws up in surprise. It looks to be the very same tree where they played together growing up, but the move here to Nottingham has not been kind to it. Where it once would've been dense with lush red apples this time of year, it looks pale and sickly now, even the branches seem to have lost a bit of their strength.

She startles when she realizes he is standing behind her.

Their eyes meet. She is even more stunning than his memory of her had done justice to, but there is something in his eyes that he does not recognize. He starts forward.

"Can I help you?" she asks, politely, without a trace of familiarity in her voice.

_You might not like what you find._

And the reality is far, far worse than anything he had allowed himself to imagine in the year they were apart.

His step falters.

"If you're here to see my husband, he's away to town on business," she says, glancing down as a small squirrel approaches, begins rummaging in the pile of wilted flowers she's left on the ground. "But I'm sure he'll be back any moment, if you wished to wait? I can have one of the servants show you to the parlor…" She's looking him over curiously, as though trying to figure out what on earth sort of business a man dressed such as he is could possibly have to discuss with her husband.

"I—" And he speaks. Though not terribly well, it turns out.

"Pardon me, milady," he bows. "I…I saw whom I presume to be your sister." He supplies the silence with irrelevant facts.

"Oh, my Zelena," she says, and the first smile finally appears, lighting up her entire face, but then it falls almost instantly. "She's staying with us now. Her…her husband passed away recently."

"I'm so sorry," Robin says haltingly.

The squirrel is frustrated with his search, and Regina pulls a handful of acorns out of her dress pocket to offer the critter.

"Your tree does not look well, milady, if you don't mind my being so bold as to say."

"I don't mind," she says, standing up, and he notices the way her shoulders are turned slightly in now, where they had always squared back in pride, in defiance of her mother, in anger at Robin, in obstinacy, in hurt, in confidence, in joy, in ecstasy, in love.

And when he happens to catch her eye, he realizes the thing in them that he's never seen before is a deep melancholy, and the spark he longed to see again is subdued, if not completely snuffed out. He takes a subconscious step toward her, wanting to find some indication that it still exists, that she is still his Regina, even if she has no idea he is still hers.

She meets his step with one of her own, and they are standing so close now that her scent fills his senses, it's intoxicating, and he wonders if his own has affected her in some way—she tilts her head at him now, like he's a puzzle she wants to solve. "Have—have we met before?"

"I could never forget it," he responds in a husky tenor, and she looks flustered. From past experience he knows that such a thing usually precedes her tendency to run, so he attempts to avoid that now, pointing up at her tree with a mischievous grin.

"Have you ever climbed one of these?" he asks.

She blinks. "What?"

He balances on one of the roots, extends a hand out to her.

She laughs incredulously. "You want me to climb that with you. Now."

He shrugs, smiles. "I would catch you if you fell."

She seems hesitant but thrillingly so.

"All right," she smiles. "I don't know why, but I trust you." She takes his hand and he hoists her up to the lowest-lying branch. She laughs breathlessly, "this is crazy," but she keeps climbing, exhilarated by how naturally this comes to her somehow, and she's shimmied halfway up the tree before she realizes how far behind he is.

"Come up here," she yells gleefully, and he does.

"Oh, this is beautiful," she says, taking in the view of the castle grounds and beyond, but he only has eyes for her, and he can't help but agree.

The branch he's standing on is some distance below hers, aligning his face with her collarbone, and he resists the urge to lean forward and press his lips to her skin now, he recalls vividly how her breath always hitches when he does it in just the right spot. But now is not the time, and it may never be the time, his decision to come here may just be the worst he's ever made, second only to leaving her.

Anchoring herself in place with a hand around the tree trunk, she swings back and forth, dazzling him momentarily with the smile on her face.

"Thank you," she says, glancing down at him, "this is just—oh—" the toe of her shoe catches against a little knot in the branch and she trips forward, landing in Robin's chest. He braces her to him with an arm around her waist, alarmed, but she's laughing, and her hand runs along his front side in her attempt to regain a proper foothold.

Her posture tenses abruptly, and he looks down to find her gaze directed at the tiniest sliver of ivory, edges stitched in red, peeking out from his breast pocket.

"What is this?" she demands, tugging, and her handkerchief unfurls in her palm. Her dark brown eyes shoot up to meet his blue ones, and the spark he'd so longed to see again is burning right through him.

"I can explain," he starts, but she's far from any desire to hear it.

"Let me go," she spits out, and he does so against his will. "I need to get down."

He hesitates, but begins to descend, and when he's five feet from the ground he jumps, landing solidly on both feet. He looks up and Regina is climbing down, but in her distraction she's lost the confidence that originally propelled her up to the top, and then she's lost her footing and tumbles down, but just as he was before, he's there to catch her again.

As she lands in his embrace her nose grazes the side of his cheek, and her eyes open with the shock of his arms suspending her midair where she'd been expecting the hard impact of ground to break her fall.

She seems to forgets her anger for a moment, and he would have noticed that she kept looking at his lips if he had been able to stop staring at hers.

The echoing clanks of a drawbridge being lowered fills the space between them and the moment is lost, she's struggling out of his hold.

"You should go," she says nervously. "My husband is—he can be a very angry man." She shudders involuntarily, and Robin's heart gives a great lurch at the implication of this.

"Has he hurt you?" he asks, and the words come out much harsher than he'd intended.

"You really need to go now," she states again, and it's not an answer, but it's all the answer he needs. He grabs her arm, gently he'd thought, but she winces and tries to wrench it away. Spurred on by the fury raging away at his heart, he turns her like a ragdoll and that's when he sees them, several small bruises along the inside of her arm, in just the right size and distribution of a man's forceful hand. He feels sick to his stomach.

"Did he do this to you?"

She doesn't respond and he grabs her other arm now, shakes her gently but his voice is anything but, "Regina," he thunders, and her mouth falls open in shock to hear her name.

"If you think I'm leaving you now, then you're a damn fool," he says. "We're both leaving, together. Now."

She raises an eyebrow at him in disbelief. "Are you _kidnapping _me?"

Now is really not the time to be arguing about this, he thinks furiously. "Not if you wish to leave," he says. "Can't take what's been given willingly."

"It really doesn't matter what I want," she says heatedly.

"But it does!" He grabs her face in his hands. "That's all that matters. Don't you understand?"

Her own hands rise to grasp his, not to pull them away as he'd suspected, but to press them further, bind them down.

"Who are you," she gasps, and he's had enough of this. Can't take the confusion in her eyes as she regards him the way she would a stranger, can't stand the thought of her spending another second near this man she calls a husband who defiled the sanctity of their marriage, and he really will steal her if he has to but before he does there's just one thing—one final attempt to return her to him, and he believes with all his heart that it is possible, because he will accept nothing less—

And he's kissing her, and it feels like coming home at last. Her hands scrabble at his chest for purchase as he hauls her off her feet and presses her flush against his body, mouth moving desperately over hers, and her hands relinquish their hold on his shirt and come up to frame his face instead. Her mouth opens up to him and he groans at the deepening contact, the hand on her back grips her harder, and his other hand buries into her hair, angling her mouth more firmly against his. Her whole body is shuddering, he feels an unmistakable trail of tears running down his cheeks, and he's not sure if they're hers, or his.

She gasps suddenly, breaks the kiss, and the spell is broken too. She's sobbing, and then she's punching him, repeatedly, pounding ineffectual fists into his chest, crying out in a relentless rage until she's gasping for breath. "You—I tried to find you!" she yells hoarsely. "I went to your cabin the next day. But your mother said you'd gone the night before. Where were you?"

His heart twists painfully.

"You left me!" She collapses into him, clutching his shirt, dragging it down with clenched hands. "You promised you would never leave me."

"I'm sorry," he rasps, and he is kissing every possible inch of her skin he can reach that's not pressed into his chest, "My love, I am so sorry."

"Where were you?" she says again, and she sounds like a broken thing.

"I couldn't stay," he whispers into her hair, "I couldn't stay and watch you marry another man."

"You ran away."

"Yes," he says, and the admission almost destroys him. "And over time I began to believe you never loved me."

"You are such an idiot," she breathes.

"Well, your mother did warn me that this might happen."

They both freeze at the new sound, slimy, unexpected, entirely unwelcome. Regina is the one to act first. "No!" she cries, shoving Robin behind her, arms spread defensively. "Stay away from him."

The Duke stands before them, watching with cruel amusement as he fingers the hilt of the sword sheathed to his side.

Robin's blood achieves a boil at the sight of him.

"I'll have to let her know she was right," continues the Duke, "although, you—" he points a finger in Robin's direction, laughs, and it is a despicable sound, "—you certainly arrived a bit later than she had predicted."

Robin pushes forward and Regina makes a desperate grab for his arm. "No, please, Robin, don't," she begs him, "he'll kill you!"

"Nothing I haven't heard before," and he draws his bow, but the Duke is a snake, a slippery reptilian thing, and he's just as quick if not a quicker, a dagger has materialized in his hand and he's poised to bury it directly into Regina's heart.

"I have excellent aim," he warns Robin with a disgusting smirk. "Just ask my wife."

"This arrow will have reached your heart before you get the chance," Robin responds with a dangerous edge in his voice.

"I don't doubt your aim, but I do question your timing, good sir. Are you willing to bet her life on it?"

Suddenly he makes a terrible choking sound. Robin lowers his bow in horror as the Duke clutches at nothing on his throat, and his face begins to turn a magnificent shade of purple.

Regina stumbles and Robin catches her, and they watch aghast as the man falls to his knees, wrestling with some invisible force pressing into his windpipe.

He has collapsed on the ground now, and his hands loosen from his neck as his entire frame goes limp as a noodle. His legs give a final twitch, and then he is still.

Zelena is standing several yards behind the Duke's body, arm outstretched, hand clenched around an invisible throat. Her eyes meet Regina's and her hand falls down to her side, then she is running forward to embrace her.

"Oh my sister," she says, clutching her hair, kissing her forehead, "Has he been hurting you all this time? Why didn't you tell me?"

Zelena looks at Robin, and now she really does seem impressed. "You broke my forgetting spell." Then, almost to herself, "I suppose true love's kiss really does exist." She makes a note of it with a detached sense of interest, as though she is cataloging the information away for future reference.

"Zelena. _You_ did this to her?"

"Oh, hush," she admonishes him. "So quick to accuse others, when it's your fault she needed this in the first place." She looks sideways at Regina. "Shall I tell him, or will you? Oh—that reminds me." A slender arm disappears inside her robes. "I suppose you'll be wanting these back." And the envelopes, his envelopes, spill from her grasp.

"She got through about three of them before she was begging me to rip her heart out of her chest," Zelena tells Robin with a reproachful eye. "But I could never do that to my little sister."

"So you took her memories instead."

"I cast the spell so that she could only get them back if the timing were right." She hugs Regina again. "And I suppose it finally is." She presses one last kiss into her hair, and then releases her back to Robin.

"I'll take care of our mother," Zelena promises her now. "We have an unfinished score to settle, anyway."

"Thank you," Regina says, and Robin's arms tighten around her. "Give her hell from us both."

"Oh I plan on it." Zelena winks at them and then she is gone in a green puff of cloud.

.

.

.

And the first time she tells him she loves him, he is half-asleep, but she'll tell him again later when she's the one who's half-asleep and he's out of bed and making her breakfast, and again and again, really any time she feels like it, because there's nothing stopping her now.

Regina lands a kiss to his bare chest before turning a bright-eyed gaze up at him. Her fingers are tickling the stubble on the side of his face. "I'm sorry. I never should have tried to forget you."

"Well," says Robin gruffly, pulling her as close to him as he can, but she has been refusing to part with the letters since they arrived at the inn above the tavern (Little John had given her a shy look and a clumsy bow as they passed him downstairs, but they'll join him later, much later). A corner of one of the envelopes prods him in the stomach, so he settles for resting his lips on her forehead instead. "I never should have given you a reason to forget."

"You didn't," is her reply. "I did this. I did this to us."

"Let's not waste another moment deciding who shoulders more of the blame," he murmurs against her skin.

Regina's kisses have traveled to his shoulder, and his eyes close, his breathing evens out. He fancies she probably thinks he's asleep when she finally says it.

"I love you," she whispers into his neck. He smiles.

"I know."

* * *

**A/N:** **Miss Poisonous**, this one's for you! Thanks for the inspiration :) And thanks everyone for reading if you got all the way down to this part! I tried really hard for some fluff this time, not entirely sure if it worked, so let me know if it did for you!


	3. F

**A/N: **For those who like to know these sorts of things, I've cast Henry Ian Cusick (my dear Desmond) as Prince John in my head. And fair warning you're probably going to want to punch him dead in the face.

* * *

_Fresh_

* * *

"Mother has invited yet another ridiculous princess to court tomorrow," John tells him that afternoon by the river. He skips a stone into the water, and it bounces one, two, three times before sinking out of sight with a soft plunk. "Another evening of idle gossip and insipid conversation about the latest city fashions, no doubt, like I could give a shit about any of that." He already looks supremely bored by the prospect. "God. I can't stand it. I'd give anything to be in your position right now."

Robin chuckles darkly beside him. "Oh, I highly doubt that." He picks up a stone of his own, tosses it in with a graceful arc. One, two, three, four, five.

"I'm serious," John insists. "At least your mother isn't breathing down your damn neck all the time about finding a suitable wife and providing her with mini-heirs. Our father's not even dead yet, what's the hurry?"

"Yes, well, my mother died giving birth to me," Robin reminds him, but John's not even listening.

"And she's used the whole affair as an excuse to throw a masquerade ball, for God's sake." He rolls his eyes in theatrical fashion. "Takes all the fun out of it. How am I expected to drown out the sound of her voice if I can't even properly enjoy what her face looks like?"

Robin politely declines to respond.

"Besides," John continues, "I had plans."

Robin coughs discreetly. "Plans, your highness?"

"Oh don't 'highness' me, brother," John says impatiently. "Just because the throne isn't yours by birthright doesn't make you any less family to me."

"I appreciate the sentiment," Robin replies, "your highness." He smirks.

Prince John ignores him completely this time. "As it were, I had plans. With Rosalind."

"The cook's daughter," Robin supplies.

"Or at the very least, she had plans for me." John's eyes glint mischievously. "There's this most remarkable thing she does with her—"

"I'll be all right if you spare me the details," Robin interrupts.

"Mother would flay me alive if she knew," John says regretfully, and Robin suspects that's half the intrigue of it.

"That's too bad," he says in an unconvincing attempt at sympathy. "Perhaps you can have your way with Rosalind some other time."

"Well hang on," says John suddenly, looking like he's just had a brilliant idea, which Robin finds concerning. "Yes, that's it," he mutters to himself, looking more excited by the second, "just take my place!"

"Pardon?"

"Don't be slow. Take my place at the damn ball. The girl won't know the difference, whether she spends all night dancing with the prince or with his bastard brother. Then I can have my way with Rosalind, as you so crassly put it, join you all in the morning and she'll be none the wiser. It's an excellent plan."

"It's a terrible plan," Robin tells him.

"Be that as it may," John proclaims triumphantly, "as your future king, I say you have no choice in the matter."

.

.

.

The mask hugs him too tightly around the temples, the belt secures his doublet too snugly around the waist.

"Stop fidgeting, John," the Queen hisses into Robin's ear. "You look like you have a rat in your tunic, for Christ's sake. And is that dirt on your—oh, Henry!" A smile cracks through the heavy layer of makeup on her face as she raises a hand to greet their guests of honor.

"And my dear Cora," she simpers, "looking as radiant as ever. So good of you to come. And you must be the lovely Regina." She pauses a moment, and Robin wonders what she's waiting for when a small heeled foot digs itself into his shoe, a painful reminder of the part he's there to play.

"Milady," he murmurs, bowing as he brushes a kiss against the princess's gloved knuckles.

Dark eyes meet his as he rights himself, too dark to read, so he looks instead to her lips, the only other part of her face that isn't covered in sequined feathers and glitter. They're plump, red and pressed into a rigid line, and she looks about as happy to be there as he is. Her mother has a firm grip on her elbow, the smile she gives her daughter is so unnaturally wide it looks almost threatening, and he realizes perhaps she is half the problem.

He offers Regina his forearm. "May I steal you away for a dance?"

"Well!" says the Queen, looking startled but pleased. "How marvelous—"

Robin is already leading Regina away to the main dance hall.

"My mother is an insufferable woman," Robin says conversationally, thinking he might as well have some fun with this while he's at it (John can thank him later).

It's hard to tell with all the sparkly things obscuring her face but he thinks he catches the startled look she throws his way before the mask is back in place. He bites back a smile, vows to put a crack in it, just a little one, by the end of the night.

But she is stubborn and unyielding at first, her waist is stiff where he places his right hand, her fingers lifeless and disinterested in his left as he leads her into the waltz. He presses himself as close to her as her dress will allow, an elaborate cascade of crimson velvet dusted in gold and trimmed with black Chantilly lace, just to get a reaction, which she doesn't give him.

"I'm so glad to see you enjoying yourself tonight, milady," he remarks as they make their first turn about the ballroom.

"It's the riveting company," she responds without pause. But then there is a pause after she says this.

Robin lifts her arm and she does an obliging spin underneath the arc of their joined hands. "It's your turn," he says finally.

"My turn to what? Twirl you?"

"To make some inane observation," he says, "or to mock me in return, all the better."

"Do you always talk this much?" she asks unpleasantly, and he can't hide his smirk now.

He dips her suddenly out of time with the music, knocking a nearby couple off course, the gentleman beside them stammers out an apology instead of tossing him a glare, and Robin thinks there are some perks to masquerading as Prince John after all.

"Perhaps you should start getting used to it," he says, lifting her back up with an elaborate flourish. "Your mother seems rather determined to accept my hand on your behalf."

"And are you the one offering it?" she retorts as he releases her at the waist, spins her away from him in a flurry of scarlet until his hand tugs her back.

She pirouettes directly into his chest and presses a palm there to counteract the momentum. He settles his other hand into her hip. "Would you take it if I were?"

"Not even if you were the king," she scoffs, and he mock-frowns.

"To my knowledge that's not the sort of answer a prince is accustomed to hearing."

Her lips twitch into a smirk of her own. "Well perhaps you should start getting used to it, then."

He slows their pace again, they have completely derailed the systematic stream of pivoting bodies and whirling skirts, but soon enough it springs back into order, parting seamlessly around them, and they are alone, together, on an island in a sea of dancing couples.

"You know," Regina says thoughtfully as he twirls her at his leisure, "I've heard a lot of stories about the great and _noble_ Prince John." And the way her mouth twists around the word tells him that she means anything but. "That he doesn't take no for an answer, and when that's the answer someone gives, he resorts to cruelty in order to get a different one. That the thing only sharper than his tongue is his sword. Or was it a whip?"

Robin grimaces, he is well aware of John's reputation as a reckless, impatient man, and he is certainly hot-tempered on occasion, but never violent, always quick to defuse. He wouldn't be capable of such things as she's implying, Robin's sure of it.

"Milady, if I may be so bold as to defend my br—myself, sometimes stories are just stories."

"Behind every story there's always some element of truth," she replies, and her skepticism makes him feel all the more compelled to change her mind.

"Perhaps," he says, "but the truth is that there is also a man behind each of these stories, and that man is standing before you now, begging you for the benefit of the doubt. Give me a chance to prove to you that I am _not_ the man you think I am."

They've stopped dancing entirely. "I'll kneel if I have to," he tells her seriously, and he's bending at the knee when she hastily grabs his arms, pulls him back up to stand.

"That's really not necessary," she says, looking a combination of both amused and mortified.

"Regina," he speaks her name for the first time, and he feels her start in surprise, "I would never hurt you. And if I am doing so now by forcing you to dance with me, then I will gladly aid in your escape myself."

"Nobody's forcing me to do anything," she says, so lowly he can barely hear the words over the exuberantly orchestral sounds of twenty stringed instruments swelling in the background. Her eyes are shifting to avoid all the looks they're getting now, her mother's in particular, even he can feel it, piercing into his back from across the vast expanse of the ballroom.

"Ask me something," Robin insists as they fall obligingly back into the rhythm of the waltz, "anything."

"All right," she says after a contemplative pause. "How does it feel to be the crown prince of England?"

"I hate it so far," he says honestly.

"Why?"

He shrugs. "Well, for one thing, it seems to put me at a supreme disadvantage when trying to win over a lady's heart."

She almost smiles. "Is that what you think you're doing?"

He grins lopsidedly at her, raises an eyebrow she can't see through his mask. "Why, is it working?"

"Hardly," she says drily, then her eyes narrow, and he feels an inexplicable twinge of disappointment in his chest before she leans in close, seems to be examining his neck. "I think you have something there."

"Damn it," he mutters, relinquishing a hand from her waist to rub the dirt off. He'd gone for a ride just before changing for the ball, to loosen his nerves in preparation for what John had assured him would be a dreadful night, and the stable dog had wrestled him down at the knees in his excitement.

"Have you been rolling around on the ground? You smell like—" she leans even further in, sniffs experimentally. "You smell like wet grass."

But then she sees, they both see, Cora's head perk up in great interest to observe how close their faces have gotten, and a brief look of mutiny crosses over Regina's like a shadow, and he can feel her begin to retreat within her mask again.

"You know," he tells her lowly, "if this is what your mother wants, perhaps you can punish her a little in return by actually enjoying it."

And she doesn't pull away, which he takes to be a good sign.

"Come on," he says suddenly, "I want to show you something."

"As delightful as that sounds," she tells him, "we're trapped here. There's nowhere to go that they won't see."

"Oh forgive me," says Robin, "I almost forgot the castle is as good as yours now, of course you would know it so well already." She sighs as he tugs her by the hand down the center aisle of the dance floor, to a place far from inquisitive eyes, where maybe he can get a better look at her own, if she will let him.

.

.

.

"Have you ridden before?"

She's too distracted to respond, is already striding up to a white mare, his white mare, rubbing her from forehead to muzzle and cooing softly. She opens the door, Shadowfax trots out and before Robin can even begin to protest that she's not yet been saddled—Regina's astride his horse, her dress hoop hiked up to her waist, revealing yards and yards of lacy petticoats underneath, there's a real smile shining down at him now, and it's a breathtaking view.

Shadowfax snorts warily at Robin, is slightly thrown by the smell of prince on his clothing, Pongo recognizes him first and barks elatedly in a mad dash to wrestle him to the ground once more. Shadowfax finally clomps over to him, bumps her face into his mask with great affection. Regina seems to find this entire exchange even more reassuring than any words he could say in his own defense, it softens the angle of her shoulders and widens her smile even further.

But she arches an eyebrow when she catches his smirk, can't let him get too comfortable without working for it just a bit more. "You might have to sit sidesaddle with that ridiculous brocade tunic of yours."

He realizes it's trailing in the mud and scowls, mutters curses—"can't stand these blasted things"—though he doubts John will mind, the prince only owns about fifty of them at a given time.

Her eyes are remarkably warmer as they watch him now, and he chooses to count it as a small victory.

"Catch up, or don't," she says, playfully indifferent, before galloping off into the meadows.

.

.

.

They end up racing back and forth across the fields, again and again, falling into it a competitive rhythm with a natural ease that surprises neither of them, loosens the tension in the looks they share, until it's replaced by something else, and she mocks Robin openly every time Shadowfax overtakes his brown palomino. He'll say later that every one of her wins was an act of mercy on his part, though they both know better.

His horse is grazing on some dandelions when Shadowfax approaches from ahead to do the same, coming to a stop alongside them, and the proximity buries Robin's leg in lace and velvet. Regina is smiling to herself as she rearranges her skirts, and when her hand brushes against his knee she doesn't remove it right away.

"I guess you do ride after all," Robin says, and she laughs, actually laughs, throws her head back, the moonlight touches her skin, she is radiant, and the hours of wind at her hair has tousled it into wild, beautiful disarray. "Not bad for a woman without a saddle."

"Well, I thought I'd make it more of a fair fight, for a man in a dress," she says, a throaty, teasing lilt to her voice, and is she flirting with him?

"It's not a dress," he argues halfheartedly, but he's never seen the appeal in these damn floor-length tunics. "Not the way yours is."

"I should hope not," she replies. "If you were wearing a dress like mine, I wouldn't even need a horse to beat you." She's laughing to herself. "You know, you're not quite what I expected."

Robin's mouth drops open in a parody of shock. "You mean you weren't expecting a prince?"

"No," she says, "that's exactly what I was expecting."

Shadowfax is nuzzling around in a fresh patch of grass and it brings Robin's arm into contact with Regina's. Their bodies are aligned side-by-side in opposite directions, but she tilts her head towards his, shoulder lifting shyly up to her chin.

His bottom lip is caught between his teeth in a grin he can't seem to shake, her eyes are undeniably warm now, her jawline strong yet gentle, her mouth has relaxed into a permanent smile, it's all he can see through the extravagant mask of glitz covering half her face, it's all he needs to see.

This really was a terrible, terrible plan, Robin thinks as the distance between them closes further and further. But that mouth of hers has been vexing him all night, first with her words and now with her smiles, and if he could know the feel her lips, just once, then he could move on with his life—

—but he has miscalculated, he learns soon enough, when her fingers come up to splay across the side of his neck and she sighs into his kiss, his hand buries into her hair, and this was not only a terrible plan, but he's beginning to think it will prove a fatal one as well.

.

.

.

Robin's heart is thundering as he and John take the steps down two at a time on their way to breakfast. John can't stop telling him about the night he had, and Robin can't bring himself to say a thing about his, longs to keep the moments private for as long as he possibly can before he has to let them, let her, go.

"Christ," John says, stops so suddenly the slim gold crown in his hair tips to the side, and Robin doesn't have to follow his gaze to know where's he looking now, because he's seen her too, Regina has materialized at the other end of the banquet hall, in a gauzy ivory gown cinched elegantly at her slender waist, a specimen of beauty in and of itself, but it's her face that Robin can't tear his eyes away from now, the face that had been such a mystery to him for most of the night before.

He feels like the air has been punched right out of his lungs.

When she senses them staring her eyes lift up, and the corners of her mouth do too, and her smile is directed at the man with the crown, when it is meant for the one standing beside him.

"She's stunning!" mutters John, and he elbows Robin sharply in the stomach. "You didn't think to mention this earlier, brother?"

No, Robin thinks, because he had no idea, and now all other ideas are meaningless in the face of this one.

"Milady," John says, sauntering forward, bowing low and pressing a long, lingering kiss into the back of her wrist. "I do hope you had a wonderful time last night."

"I did," she responds with a hint of mischief in her eyes.

"And I trust your mother and father did as well?" John continues.

"Of course," says Regina, "but business at home has called them away. I'm afraid they left just after dawn." Her smile is full and bright now, and Robin feels a physical ache in his chest. She's free, free from the overbearing presence of her mother, free to fall for the right man this time, the one with the rightful crown on his head, not some imposter in a dirt-stained tunic.

He's fully intending to excuse himself, walk away, when her gaze turns to him in curiosity.

"Oh, this," says John like an afterthought, "is my brother, Robin. I don't believe you had the pleasure of meeting him yesterday."

"No, I don't believe I did," says Regina, holding out her hand, and Robin takes it, kisses her knuckles, not daring to look her in the eye, drops her hand back down before she can notice that his is trembling.

"He was…otherwise preoccupied last night," says John, with a wink about as subtle as the hearty slap he gives Robin on the back, and he pulls Regina's seat out with a flourish of gallantry. "Isn't that right, brother?"

Robin gives them a tight smile, averts his gaze so they can't detect the murderous intent behind it. But the feeling only grows stronger, with every word John whispers into her ear throughout breakfast, every stifled laugh that shakes her shoulders, and when she does turn to Robin, inquires politely how his evening away from the ball was, John only chuckles and pulls her attention back to him with some comment about his brother's habitual carelessness with women's hearts.

.

.

.

He lets loose an arrow upon his target. It rips the budding fruit clean off its stem, pins it to the trunk of another tree several yards away.

"Are you in the habit of killing things before they've had a chance to grow?"

"Milady," he says, lowering his bow, startled.

"You left breakfast in a hurry," Regina observes as she strolls up to him. She has come alone, he notices with some confusion, wonders what she could possibly want with the bastard brother to her beloved prince. "Although it sounds like you had an eventful if not exhausting night. I'm sure it paled in comparison to the morning you just had."

He hesitates before answering. "I'm not sure I follow."

She steps closer to him.

"John's words," she says, and even hearing the name falling from her lips is the most unbearable sound in the world to him. "But I've heard sometimes stories are just stories."

"He certainly does have a tendency to exaggerate them," Robin responds bitterly before he can help himself.

"Does he? I haven't really talked to him much."

"No?" Perhaps because you were too busy doing things other than talking last night.

She shrugs, looks him directly in the eye. "I only just met the man."

"Yes, I'm sure young love can feel that way." He's pulling another arrow from his quiver when she grabs it from him, tosses it aside. He glances up in shock. Her face remains impassive but her eyes positively burn.

"Milady, what—"

Without warning, she grasps his doublet and pulls his face down within inches of hers.

"Your words are convincing enough but your eyes give you away," she says darkly, just like hers do, he's utterly memorized by the way her lips form around the accusation, and then they're soft and irresistible against his.

Robin responds instantly, regretfully, unrepentantly, fisting his hands into the back of her hair and thank God she wore it down this morning, some strangled sound escapes his mouth as she slips her tongue inside, he revels in the feel of her hand on his cheek where a mask had been the night before.

"And so does your kiss," she gasps when they part.

He doesn't know whether to rejoice that she's known all along, or to curse himself to high hell for his stupidity at having invited this glorious dilemma into his life.

"So is this some game to you?" she asks with an undercurrent of fury, though her clenched hands still hold him intoxicatingly close to her, his fingers can't fight the temptation to stay tangled in her hair. "If you think my heart is just some toy for you to play with until you get bored, you should think twice."

He's offended by the very idea of it. "Trust me when I say that was the furthest thing from my mind last night," he growls, "I did what my brother asked of me, and my own actions beyond that were borne from a selfishness that I did not realize I possessed. But as I told you last night, I would never act unconscionably in such a way as to hurt you."

"Well congratulations," hisses Regina, "because you happened to fail miserably." He looks at her, bewildered, she continues, "My mother told me the news before she left this morning," and he can't breathe. "I'm betrothed," she tells him, and his face drains completely of blood and sensation, "to that _brother _of yours. Who, by the way, is just as insufferable as his mother is."

He begins to protest and she stops him with a gentle hand to his mouth.

"You grew up together and somehow you turned out so differently," she muses, and then she shakes her head. "What is wrong with me," she's berating herself now, "I'm pretty sure I don't even like you."

"Yet another thing we don't agree on," Robin retorts. "And while I wholeheartedly wish I could return the false sentiment—"

She shuts him up with another kiss.

.

.

.

And he's known from the start that it's too good to be true, but it feels too right to be wrong, he's falling a little bit more for her every day, until he thinks he can fall no further, but he's wrong after all, there's a deep chasm waiting to claim him at the edge as soon as he missteps.

It starts with a gentle caress under the table at mealtimes, she'll trail a finger along his forearm on one side while John is prattling into her ear on the other, and the whole ordeal is made slightly less unbearable when Robin imagines her tongue replacing her hand, which it will later, and then later escalates into now, she can't help but steal a whole kiss from him before they've even made it into the banquet hall, and he finds her just as irresistible if not more so.

But for every forbidden touch they share they can't help but exchange words that are equally heated, and arguing comes as naturally as breathing to them, until the kisses that always come afterward steal both their breaths away.

She is particularly angry with him one evening when Rosalind makes a rare appearance outside of the kitchens and, upon being conspicuously scorned by John, turns her attentions to Robin, brushes her bosom against his shoulder when she ladles soup in his bowl, whispers into his ear with a smile that he returns without thinking much of it.

But it's all Regina can think about when she stalks off after supper and retreats to her bedchambers, even John takes note of her coldness and wonders to anyone who will listen what he might have done to upset her, but Robin is listening least of all, excuses himself to the stables where he waits for her, and she does not come.

He kills another half an hour pacing up and down the hall, debating whether to knock on her door, thinks better of it every time he lifts a hand to do so, but still he can't bring himself to walk away completely when the mahogany panel swings open and she's standing before him in nothing but a robe and nightgown, she looks so relieved to see him there that his frustration melts instantly away as her body melts instantly into his.

He backs her against the wall with his kisses, hot and demanding, they leave her breathless and him lightheaded, when her fingernails drag under his shirt across the skin of his stomach and the blood rushes from his brain down to much, much lower, and a flick of his wrist has her robe untied and pooling around her bare feet.

He presses her hand into his chest, just above his heart, "This belongs to you," he rasps to her, "don't you understand that? It's all that I am. I'm yours."

"I know," she fights the words out in between gasps as his mouth moves down her neck and presses into her collarbone, "I've always known." She stills his movements with a hand in his hair.

"Have you?" but he misunderstands, she is shaking her head.

"I've always known who you are," and she angles her hips deep into his, a delicious tremble runs down his back at the contact, "from the moment you stepped out of time to the music, I knew who you were, and I already loved you for it."

His breath hitches at the confession, and at the fingers she's digging into his waist, loosening the knot at his breeches, slipping inside, grasping him firmly. His eyes roll back, lids flutter close, he's lost.

The servants pretend not to notice when Robin sneaks back to his bedchambers the following morning wearing the previous day's clothing, when Regina does the same the morning after that, again and again, when Robin emerges from the stables with his tunic tied on backwards, their love has made them giddy, and their giddiness makes them careless. But it's only a matter of time before the wrong person gets the right idea.

.

.

.

"Brother, I can't believe that woman is going to be my wife within the fortnight."

Against all odds, all past declarations of his incapability to love anyone apart from himself and his brother Robin, John is utterly bewitched, and the more Regina plays these "coquettish games" with him, as he calls it, the more desirable she grows in his eyes. All the Rosalinds in the world could not divert his gaze from her now. He reasons that she must still have her virtue intact somehow—"Though with a face and a figure like that I can't see how any man could contain himself," he muses to Robin, who fights back the bile—which she plainly wishes to preserve until their wedding night. To him, there could be no other possible explanation for why she time and again shies away from his hand on her arm, turns her head to the side when he puts his lips to her ear; he takes her shivering to indicate an impressive amount of restraint against her mutual desire for him.

Robin's loyalty has always been to his brother, to his future king, he has never much desired anything that belonged to John, neither his crown nor his kingdom, but the thought of him claiming Regina as his own ignites an unquenchable fury in Robin's heart. (And he can't help but feel a little guilty, though not nearly guilty enough to stop.)

He tells her as much later that night as they lie together in a tangle of limbs and linens, but the thought of her sharing so much as a kiss with John, let alone a wedding vow or a bed or a life, is just as repulsive to her if not more so. She tells Robin that she would die first, and he tells her in kisses what he can't bring himself to say in words, that he would rather die in her place. Neither can bear to speak of the day that marches closer and closer with each passing night they spend locked in each other's embrace, and with each morning it grows more and more difficult to leave it. Her back arches into the heat of his mouth against her skin, she whispers his name in ecstasy, and he really was right all along, this will be the death of them both.

.

.

.

But John has other plans for them when he finally discovers the truth.

.

.

.

They're in a maze of dungeons Robin has never stepped foot in, the walls radiate the smells of rotten flesh, their rough stone surfaces permanently darkened by the stains of old blood and excrement, but it's the scent of fresh blood that has his stomach lurching, his heart twisted in excruciating pain.

A guard dressed head to toe in a coal-colored uniform Robin has never seen yanks forcefully at the rope that binds his arms behind his back, his shoulders scream from the unnatural angle, his throat is raw from yelling and he can't get to her in time, can't block the brunt of the whip with his own body as it lashes down and John's aim is so precise the tip of it just barely strikes her face, the skin of her upper lip blossoms open in a gush of red, and she cries out.

"John," Robin begs, and it's a side of him he never knew existed, would have denied to the end of his days if that end hadn't seemed so imminent now, and at the hands of the prince himself, "brother, please—"

"You should think twice before addressing me as such again," John tells him calmly, "you are no brother of mine," and the thing that chills Robin above all is his degree of composure, the same blasé attitude he might reserve for something as commonplace as getting his hair trimmed by the court barber, and how could Robin have been so blind to the fact that he grew up alongside a monster?

"We're both well aware that the only reason she fell in love with you is because she thought you were the prince," John towers over him, and his scathing remark showers Robin's face with flecks of his spit. "When in reality, you're nothing. Do you know," he speaks almost conversationally now as he kneels at eye level with Robin, "what they still call your mother behind your back at court?" He sneers. "The Locksley _whore_."

Robin lashes out with nothing but his blind rage, and Regina is sobbing his name.

"I only fell in love with him all the more when I discovered he wasn't you," she shouts furiously, and John's face twitches once and then is still.

"I'm through with her for the moment," he says dismissively, waving at one of the guards. "You may take her upstairs, to my bedchambers."

"No!" she yells as she fights the guard whose grip is bruising on her shoulder. "Don't you so much as touch him, or it will be the last thing you ever do, I swear to God!"

John chuckles as though she is some pet that's particularly charming when it misbehaves. "My dear sweet soon-to-be wife, what are you going to do to stop me? Poison me in my sleep? Sleep is the last thing I have in mind for either of us tonight." He looks bored. "Please, take her away. I simply have one last point to prove to my…brother."

The guard grabs Regina roughly at the elbow and hauls her up, the gash in her lip is still bleeding, will probably scar, and Robin reaches for her but another guard shoves him violently back, their eyes hold each other's for an agonizing moment until she is wrenched from his sight. His heart aches in its desire for her to be safe, throbs to know she isn't.

"I loved you as my own family," John hisses. "I grew up with you, I defended you to my mother when she wanted nothing more than to throw you away with the rest of Father's day-old garbage. And this, _this_, is how you repay me? I shared my life with you, but I will be damned to hell if you think I'll be sharing _her_."

The anguished look on Regina's face haunts him still, it's all he can see. "If any harm comes to her—"

"If any harm comes to me, I can assure you she will receive no better."

Robin is startled enough by the implication that he stops struggling against the ties that bind him.

"That's right. I'm not going to kill you, brother. Quite the opposite, in fact. After all, there are things much, much worse than death."

"Whatever you are planning, she will never love you," Robin tells him lowly.

John laughs, actually claps him on the shoulder, an echo of their old camaraderie. "I couldn't give less of a damn if she did or not, so long as she's not yours. The punishment for your treasonous crime, _brother_, to is live a long, healthy life by my side, and to know that she will never be."

He half-steps into the darkness and speaks briefly to a man Robin cannot see before turning back around.

"Your fealty is to me, brother," Prince John tells him with the coldness of a complete stranger. "You would've done well to remember that. And now, you'll never forget it."

.

.

.

The sting of the needle is still fresh, the dye bleeding so deeply into his skin that its mark is permanent, a jet-black shield enclosing the body of a lion, teeth bared in a snarl, hind legs poised in anticipation of battle, the royal crest of the House of the King. And Prince John is right, Robin thinks as his hand clenches into a fist, the muscles in his forearm tense from the pain, but he welcomes it, it's not the pain that concerns him now, but the anger it fails to mask. He will never forget. He will never stop fighting.

.

.

.

And in the gardens beyond the stables, where her horse grazes in the shadows of the orchards, Regina waits, for the apples have finally begun to ripen.

* * *

**A/N:** So many thanks to **emily31594** for all her help when I was struggling with this. She's the best. And thank you all for reading, it means so much to me when you guys do! Please take the time to leave a review if you can, I can't tell you what a boost of motivation and gratitude it gives me to read them!


	4. G

**A/N:** Here's a sequel to Fresh. Long live Prince John!

* * *

_Guilt_

* * *

"I'm going to poison your brother," she states matter-of-factly, they only have a few minutes left before the guards stationed right outside her door have completed their nightly shift change, and this is what she chooses to tell him?

He thinks she's joking, his question is only meant to humor her, "And where do you plan to acquire said poison?" but the solemn look she gives him produces a startled one of his own.

"I found something in my mother's grimoire," she confesses, voice dropping an octave into something he can't recognize, and the look in her eyes is just as foreign, chilling him to the bone.

"Her _what_?"

"Her book of spells," she supplies, then bites her lip thoughtfully. The wound there has finally healed, developed the pearlescent texture of a newly formed scar. "I have all the ingredients ready for the potion, I just need the apples to ripen. They're nearly ready but we're running out of time. We only have three nights left, or they'll have to force that wedding dress onto my dead body."

"That's exactly what I'm trying to avoid," Robin argues, because even the thought of it nearly brings him to his knees. "You can't be serious, Regina." She glares at him, because she is. "Magic always comes with a price, and if you resort to killing him then you're no better than—"

"You don't understand," she interrupts furiously, "you don't know what he's _done_!"

Her words freeze him in place and her hand flies to her mouth, but it's too late to take them back. He's asked her, again and again, _what happened that night, my love_, the night John had separated them down in the dungeons, and her answer is always the same, _nothing, nothing, I promise you he never laid a hand on me_—what a damn fool he's been, to believe her.

"What has he done?" Robin asks, and when her mouth stays clamped shut he grips her shoulders as though to shake an answer out of her, growling, "_What has he done to you_?"

She shrugs him off. "Nothing," she bites out, but the word 'nothing' means everything to him now.

"He came to you that night, didn't he," he realizes, horror descending like a shadow over his heart, "before I did. Regina, did he—" His throat closes off, he feels on the verge of retching. Her arms come around to anchor him upright, her touch soothing on his back; and why is she the one comforting him, when he was such a goddamn idiot to carry on the last two weeks as though everything would magically resolve itself somehow—sneaking through the window into her bedchambers like a lovesick teenager, blind to everything but his own selfish needs?

He'd refused to believe the depth of his brother's darkness once before; and now he'd underestimated it completely, even with the reminder permanently fixed to his arm.

Regina is tracing the outline of his tattoo now, the surrounding skin still red, tender. "If I had told you," she finally responds, tucking her head under his chin so that he can't see her face, "I would've been the one trying to talk you out of killing him."

And that's all the answer she needs to give him.

He has half a mind to take her away, now, far, far away, like she'd asked him to before and _why hadn't he listened, he's a bloody fool_, when scuffling on the other side of the door announces the arrival of the new guard. This is the hardest part of every day, she has told him—not suffering in silence at the banquet hall, or having to endure John's sickening act of charm and goodwill, or waiting hours for the few minutes she can spend with Robin again—but this, when the minutes are never enough, and each goodbye feels as terrifying final as the last.

He takes her face in his hands, presses a bruising kiss to the corner of her mouth.

"I love you," he says, and the desperation always surges at this point in the night, but more so now than ever—her fingers touch his lips in response, and then he swings himself onto the balcony, up and out of sight, as her door creaks open.

"What are you going to do?" Robin hears her scathing voice address the guard loudly as he pauses with a foothold in the castle wall. "Watch me while I undress? Turn around!"

The guard stammers out an apology—"Just my orders to check in on you, Lady Mills"—before the door closes again.

Robin scales a series of ivy-entwined trellises, breathless by the time he makes it back to his own quarters, dread infusing his heart and leaving one thing clear in his mind—Regina won't be able to go through with it. She's impulsive, headstrong, stubborn as hell, but he knows she doesn't have it in her to kill a single living thing. The woman drives Rosalind and the rest of the kitchen help absolutely mad because she's always dropping scraps of cheese and pieces of fruit on the ground for the castle mice to find.

She's ridiculous, but she's his.

He slams his fist into the wall, hopes it will absorb some of the white-hot fury coursing through his body (it doesn't).

Something has to be done.

He wonders, again, how he could have been so blind and stupid.

.

.

.

_She's on her knees, hunched over as though trying to curl herself into a point of nonexistence. Shoulders quiver with the quiet sound of her tears. He lands on the stone floor of her balcony with a soft thump and she turns, startled out of her misery for a brief moment, but then seeing him only seems to worsen it._

"_You shouldn't be here," she says, voice catching, and he feels something monstrous clawing at his heart when he sees her handkerchief raised to her upper lip, soaked through with fresh red blood. "He'll kill you if he finds you."_

"_I won't let him find me," Robin promises her. Of that much he is certain. "Are you all right?"_

_It's an asinine question, and he regrets it immediately. (Of course she's not all right, neither is he; can either of them be, ever again?) She turns away from him and he rushes forward, kneels down, presses against her, chest to back, and her fingernails dig desperately into his forearms as they encircle her tightly from behind._

"_I'm sorry," he whispers into her hair, over and over, "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry—I never should have let this happen—I never should have let us—"_

_She stills in his arms. "What are you saying?" Her head turns and he grazes his nose against her cheek but she flares up, wrenches away. "That you're sorry we happened? That you regret _us_?"_

"_I would never regret loving you," Robin tells her heatedly, _God this woman is so stubborn in her extremes sometimes_, "but if it weren't for me, you wouldn't be here, trapped like this."_

"_Let's leave then," she pleads, twisting around, taking his face between her hands, thumbs dragging across his lips, the stubble on his chin, "we can just…run away. Escape him, escape everything."_

"_Then he really will hunt us down and kill us both."_

"_I would rather die than be without you," she says forcefully._

"_And I would rather die than let you cease to exist because of me!" They've had this conversation before; nothing has changed, and yet everything has._

_She shoves him off completely this time. "That's where we'll have to agree to disagree," she hisses, and he reaches for her again but she struggles, slams her fists into his chest as she chokes back a fresh wave of tears, and then she's collapsing into him, shaking, crying; her tears mingle with the sweat that's already drenched through his tunic. He holds her close, as close as humanly possible, face pressed into the top of her head, until she pushes, creating just enough space between them for her to drag his mouth down to hers. One hand spans her back while the other buries into her hair as they kiss, a desperate movement of lips against tongue. He tries to slow their pace, can't bear the thought of opening her wound further but she leans into him, coaxing his mouth back open with a gentle swipe and a strangled sigh._

"_Has he hurt you?" she asks breathlessly when they finally part, hands roaming his body in search of injuries._

"_Yes," replies Robin, "he has," and his thumb reaches up to trace the gash on her upper lip, swollen from his kisses now, though oddly it looks as though it stopped bleeding some time ago._

"_You know what I mean," she says, but then she sees the dried blood matting his sleeve down to his forearm, lifts it gently up to reveal the lion embedded in his skin._

"_The royal crest?" she questions, confused, and he tries to smile but it doesn't come out quite right._

"_A reminder that I live to serve Prince John."_

_She raises his arm to her lips, ghosting over the mark with a kiss, and his palm cups her cheek._

"_I love you," she whispers, entwining her fingers in his, "I love you, Robin of Locksley. I—"_

_The sound of footsteps approaching her door, and the periodic thudding of a metal staff on paved ground along with it, breaks her off midsentence._

"_The guard is here. Go," she begs him. "Please, just go."_

_But he's glued to the spot, nothing can convince him to leave her at anyone's mercy again, nothing except—_

"_Go!" she whispers frantically. "He'll kill you!"_

_He shakes his head, he's not convinced—_

"_What do you think he'll do to me, then?" she demands lowly._

_And so he leaves, but he comes back for her, every night, until there are no nights left for him to come back to, until the apples finally ripen and they're carried back to the castle by the basketful before the worms and woodland critters can get to them._

.

.

.

"Hot and fresh apple turnover for his majesty," announces Rosalind on the eve of the wedding, dropping the plate unceremoniously in front of Prince John's beaming face. Another dish of desserts is set before Regina, with such force that one of the lemon cakes rolls off the table and bounces onto the floor out of sight (the mice will sneak it back into their tunnels later).

"Rather rude sort of woman," John says offhandedly as Rosalind stalks off. "Don't you think, my dear?"

Regina gives him a tight smile in return, but her eyes are trained downward at the pastry on his plate. Her shoulders slump forward, a flash of disappointment crossing over her drawn features, and Robin knows he was right; she couldn't bring herself to do it after all.

Thank God for contingency plans.

"Robin must have done quite the number on her poor little heart," continues John with an infuriatingly easygoing smile. "Isn't that right, brother?"

"Quite," Robin agrees mechanically.

"Well, it looks like the apples are finally in season. This smells absolutely divine," John exclaims, clapping his hands together in anticipation. "Darling, do take the first bite. Go on."

Robin tenses.

"I'm allergic," Regina says shortly, and his breathing eases up the smallest bit.

"Shame," tsks John, cutting into the turnover and stabbing a piece with undue vigor, lifting it to his mouth. "I'll let you know what you're missing out on in just a moment."

"John," his mother calls from further down the table, and he sets his fork back onto the plate as he cranes his head to listen. "My sweet boy, we've just received the most _terrible_ news, the Duke of Nottingham is no longer able to attend the festivities tomorrow; it appears he's—" and she prattles on, and on.

"No matter, mum," John calls jovially when she's finished, "his presence will be missed, but everything else is going spectacularly as planned. My blushing bride-to-be will surely be a sight for sore eyes, now that that nasty cut has healed." He shakes his head fondly. "I keep telling my Regina, her tree-climbing habit is remarkably unladylike, and those branches can be rather vicious. I'm just sorry she had to learn that lesson the hard way."

The Queen hums sympathetically.

Regina is toying with one of the lemon cakes on her plate, face forcibly passive. Robin clenches a fist under the table, quells the urge to destroy something with it.

John's about to raise his fork back to his mouth—the apple turnover is getting regrettably colder as they speak—when Cora Mills, two seats down from the Queen, speaks suddenly, a rarity in and of itself, and then even John looks surprised when it's Robin whom she addresses.

"What an interesting tattoo," she comments mildly. "I don't recall seeing that when Henry and I were last here."

"Ah, yes, that," John interjects with a grin and a saucy wink at Robin. "I'm afraid that was on my account, wasn't it? Always and forever grateful for your undying support, brother. Long live the King!" He raises his goblet in a toast, and the rest of the table follows suit.

Regina looks miserable, and Robin is struggling, as he does every day, not to take her hand under the table, take it and never let go, when suddenly the sound of metal clinking against metal echoes throughout the banquet hall and his brother can't seem to stop coughing.

He can only manage to stare at first as John grasps at his throat with one hand, thrashing wildly out with the other, his rings catching on the tablecloth and dragging it, along with mounds of food, dishes and silverware, onto the floor in a resounding cacophony of clangs and clatters.

The Queen is screaming for help and Robin, coming back to himself, jumps to his brother's aid, wrapping his arms around him from behind and, curling a hand over his fist, pushes up and into John's middle. The prince gasps for air as Robin shoves his fist into his belly, over and over but to no avail; John falls limp in his arms and they loosen, spent, and he watches dazedly as his brother's body sinks to the floor, limbs flopping uselessly to the sides.

Regina is paralyzed to her chair in horror.

One of John's personal attendants leans over his still body, assessing it for signs of life.

"He's still breathing!" he calls out finally, looking relieved. "He looks to be asleep. Odd…"

"John!" the Queen is sobbing hysterically, shoving everyone aside as she kneels over her son's body, bends and smothers his face with kisses. "John, John, wake up. _Wake up, John_!" Her shrill cries fill the hall.

"_You_," she's snarling suddenly, Robin looks down expecting to meet her gaze, but she's directed it at Regina instead, and he hadn't anticipated this, now he's the one who can't breathe. "You…you wench! You poisoned my son!"

Regina can only gape at her.

"Don't think I don't know how you truly felt about him," the Queen yells, "and don't think you can get away with this!"

"No," says Robin suddenly, he's told her before that he would gladly give his life so that hers may be spared, and now that time has come, "Regina is innocent. It was I. I poisoned him."

The Queen rounds on him. "I _knew_ it," she hisses, "all these years, you've only been biding your time, wanting nothing but to claim my son's crown as your own. How many times have I warned your father that this was inevitable—guards! Seize him!"

Regina seems to find her strength at last, and she lunges forward out of her chair but Cora steps in, grabs her daughter forcefully by both arms, holding her back.

"No!" Regina's screaming furiously. "No—don't take him—it was me! It was me, I did it. I poisoned that _son of a bitch_!"

The Queen, whipped into a mad frenzy now, grabs the nearest guard, who seems reluctant to make any move on his own, and practically shoves him in Robin's direction. "A conspiracy plot! Throw them both in the dungeon!" she demands in a wild uproar, and Robin feels his arms pulled behind his back, but he only has eyes for Regina, his love, the woman he has failed to save.

.

.

.

"You idiot," Regina cries, grabbing his face in her hands as much as the metal bars between them will allow. "What have you done?"

"I didn't poison John," he tells her, and it's the truth.

"As if you were capable of doing such a thing," she says, looking furious that he's even bothering to state something so obvious. "You should have let them take me instead."

"Over my dead body," he fumes.

"Funny," she snaps back at him, though her touch is still gentle, "I thought that was something we were both trying to avoid. _What_ were you thinking?"

"I knew you couldn't," he begins, pausing briefly to kiss her fingertips, he will kiss every inch of her he possibly can until they are forced to pay for their love with their lives, "I knew you couldn't go through with your plan—but I couldn't let you continue to suffer, couldn't bear the thought of him laying another wrongful hand on—"

"Who poisoned him?" Regina asks, and he will tell her but she won't believe him, how could she?

"I did," a voice speaks up suddenly in the darkness, and Regina's eyes widen in recognition before they've even focused on the figure emerging from the shadows.

"Mother?"

"Well," Cora amends, "that is only a half-truth. I did have help. The cook's daughter was very easily persuaded. Hell hath no fury quite like such a girl as that."

"_Rosalind_?"

"What a darling young thing," says Cora with a pleasant smile.

"But how did you even—" Regina turns an accusing eye on Robin, who lowers her hand from his face guiltily. "You involved my _mother_ in this?"

"Honestly, I don't know why you keep insisting on saying 'mother' like it's some vulgar curse word," Cora scolds her. "And no, he didn't, at least not intentionally." She raises an eyebrow in either amusement or disdain, Robin can't discern. "I caught him, snooping through my trunk of belongings. As though I would keep my book in a place so easily accessible to the likes of him."

_Definitely disdain, then_, Robin thinks.

"But why…" Regina trails off, shaking her head. "I don't understand. Why would you do this? Why would you help us?"

"Help _you_," Cora corrects. "I did this for you, Regina. I'm hurt you find that so hard to believe. I'm not _heartless_, for goodness' sake. Besides," she examines her gloved hands and adds, in an alarmingly casual tone, "no man should expect to treat my daughter that way without a proper scolding."

"But you wanted me to marry a prince," Regina states plaintively.

"Oh yes," says Cora, "and if everything goes as planned, a prince is _exactly_ what you will marry." She looks briefly at Robin, then back to Regina. "Now…the Queen's reaction, I admit, I did not anticipate. But that will be taken care of, momentarily."

"Taken care of?" Regina repeats, appalled. "Mother—what do you mean _taken care of_?"

"Relax, dear. I'm not going to poison her too, if that's what you think." Cora chuckles lightly. "How positively provincial. Now…why are you two just sitting there? We have names to clear, and others to ruin. Come." And the doors click open with a snap of her fingers.

"Regina," Robin breathes, scrambling onto his feet, out of the cage, and she throws herself into his outstretched arms. Her feet lift off the ground as he pulls her up into his chest, hand cradling the back of her head as he presses his mouth against her temple.

"I thought I'd never be able to hold you like this again," he speaks into her hair, her arms tightening around him in response, "and that frightened me more than the prospect of death."

Cora is eyeing him curiously. "You were prepared to accept the blame all along for this, weren't you?"

His subsequent silence confirms it.

She exhales slowly through her nose, a long-suffering sigh. "Yes, I suppose you'll have to do."

.

.

.

Rosalind testifies the following morning (the morning the royal wedding would have been held, if the groom weren't presently resting in a glass-covered coffin beneath the shade of the apple trees); she states under oath and in unequivocal terms that two of the prince's own personal guard had threatened her life if she did not make an attempt on his.

When the members of the guard are lined up to be identified, she points with complete confidence at the only two men who are donned in coal-colored uniforms. (The sounds of their screams as they're burned at the stake still haunt Regina in her sleep, she starts awake and the guilt overwhelms her; but Robin's arms are there to cradle her close until the shaking stops, and his tattoo reminds her, reminds them, of everything their love has endured, surpassed.)

The Queen is devastated by the inexplicably comatose state of her only child, but properly mortified by her behavior towards the Mills family, and towards the King's firstborn son—son by blood and, soon enough, by law, when a letter bearing the seal of the Archbishop of Canterbury arrives, declaring Robin of Locksley the legitimized son of the one true King and heir to the throne of England.

Cora is the only one who seems unfazed by the contents of the letter.

The royal healer cannot fathom what ailment has befallen the prince, there is no known cure for what he declares to be some sort of 'sleeping curse,' a curse that has preserved John's body in a timeless state, softened the cruelty that lines his handsome, remorseless features. Regina, however, has read the fine delicately handwritten script, crunched into the bottom of the page of her mother's grimoire, and there is such a thing as a cure, though not for Prince John. _The only thing that can break it is true love's kiss_, she tells Robin on the eve of his coronation as she fits him into one of those dress tunics he despises so much, and not even a kiss from John's own mother had qualified as such.

There are some things that are much, much worse than death after all.

.

.

.

The utter relief when her monthly cycle finally arrives has Regina sobbing onto the bed where they lie tangled in each other's arms.

"I would have loved the child as my own," Robin tells her, lips on her shoulder.

"I don't know how I could have loved a product of such hate," she whispers, resting her head on the pillow as she snuggles into his embrace, feels the comforting rise and fall of his chest against her back.

"He would only have known love in his life," Robin argues gently, "as would any child we raise together," and she turns her head towards him with a mischievous smile curving her lips upward.

"'He'?" she questions playfully. "What makes you think we won't have a girl?"

"A miniature version of you would certainly be a sight to behold," he chuckles, "but I just have a feeling about this one." A pause. "Although I have to say I'm having difficulty picturing Cora as a grandmother."

"Well, luckily for her," Regina flips around, settles her chest against his, brings his hips close with a leg thrown over his side, smiles at the involuntary hitch in his breath, "I'm feeling a little selfish for now. I'd like to have you all to myself, for just a little while longer, if that's all right with you."

"Then luckily for you," Robin says, leaning in to steal a kiss, "it just so happens that I've always been yours."

She lets out a yelp as he turns suddenly onto his back, carrying her with him. His hands roam freely over her body as she lies on top of him, pressing her lips into his neck where she can feel the erratic beat of his pulse. "So…" she drags a palm down his chest, "how shall we celebrate our engagement, _my_ prince?"

He smiles crookedly. "How do you feel about a masquerade ball?"

* * *

**A/N:** Yeah, I couldn't kill Prince John. I just couldn't. But please rest assured knowing that he is never, ever going to wake up. Anyway, I hope this wasn't too disappointing of a follow-up…please leave a review and let me know what you think! Thanks for reading :)


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